Editorial: Hypocrisy on steroids
09/25/06
An editorial
This can only happen in George Bush's America.
Two reporters for the San Francisco Chronicle have been ordered to serve 18 months in prison because they won't reveal who leaked them portions of the grand jury testimony that revealed the extent of steroid use in Major League Baseball, including by slugger Barry Bonds and other prominent names in the game.
Reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, whose reporting for the San Francisco paper has exposed much of the so-called BALCO steroid scandal and who co-wrote the highly acclaimed book "Game of Shadows," were ordered to serve the sentences unless they tell federal officials who leaked them the secret testimony. The two are currently free pending an appeal to federal appeals court.
This marks yet another time in which news reporters, in a nation that supposedly is the beacon of a free press, have been charged and ordered to jail by federal officials who seek to punish them because they won't compromise sources, a major tool in being able to get behind government secrecy and do their jobs to keep the public informed.
What's even more troubling about this latest jailing of reporters is that none other than President Bush himself last year praised Fainaru-Wada and Williams for their work and decried the use of steroids in baseball. Bush, a former baseball team owner himself, called on Major League Baseball to get to the bottom of the scandal and rid the game of the illegal drugs.
It was also this Republican-controlled Congress that dragged in a group of high-profile baseball stars - Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Jason Giambi - to grill them about steroids in the game. The senators then threw up their hands when they couldn't get any answers from the stonewalling jocks.
Later, two enterprising reporters were able to get behind the story and now Bush's own Justice Department turns around and succeeds in getting them charged with contempt of court.
As Williams told the U.S. District Court in defending himself, "They demand that I betray our First Amendment, which I have tried to serve. I have been taught the First Amendment guarantees the people not only the right to voice their opinions about our government, but also the right to inquire into the workings of the government and to have a free press that will inquire into the government's workings on their behalf."
There is no national security or some higher concern that is guiding this case. Rather, it's an attempt to find the person who leaked the information and, in order to do so, punish the reporters who dug out the information and reported it to the people.
And we thought this only happens in Third World countries.
